


Should/Shouldn't

by judasryden



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Coma, M/M, Post-Split
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 08:51:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4298433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/judasryden/pseuds/judasryden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I thought I wanted you gone. I really did.</p><p>The thought of all of that energy leaving you -- your soul tumbling from your mouth, I never thought I wanted that, but I thought I could just let you go. Watch you disappear.</p><p>Then, I thought I wanted you to stay.</p><p>But I'm always wrong. I've always been wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Should/Shouldn't

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Should/Shouldn’t  
> Story Type: fanfic; Ryden, coma fic  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Genre: Romance, Drama; is post-split a genre?  
> Status: Short story; 1/?  
> Credits: Beta'd by .somethingvelveteen and based roughly the following promt found at otpprompt.tumblr.com: "Imagine person A of your OTP has been in a coma for roughly a year. The doctors are about to pull the plug when person B shows up. Begging them to give them one more day because today happens to be their anniversary. The doctors say ok and later, person C, or person A’s best friend, comes in with a bag, hands it to person B, then leaves. When they open the bag, they find a build-a-bear wearing an outfit exactly like person A. When they hug it, they hear one of those recorded voice things inside. It’s person A saying “Will you marry me?” When they look in in the bag they find a small box with a ring inside. They start to cry and hug person A saying “yes” and “I do.” They then feel a pair of arms wrap around them, and person A weakly saying, “Hey, why are you crying?”"

I don’t really know how I got in the car. I know it’s early, and I know it’s not warm enough to need the air conditioning on but I can’t drive comfortably without the windows rolled down. I know the coffee that’s sitting in the cup holder next to me is just an accessory, losing its heat and all appeal. I know I’ve been up for at least two hours and I only made it to keep my hands busy, putting a use to their tremble. I know the radio is on some default station and I’m turning left into the visitor’s parking lot, and I know I shouldn’t be here.  
  
I know the sun hits my skin with a level or warmth I associate with you sitting next to me in public – subtle and tangible and delightful. I know that hurts to think about and inspires me to hurry inside to escape it. But once I’m there in the hospital lobby it’s freezing and I’m still thinking of you and the temperature of your shoulders when your eyes wouldn’t meet mine. It reminds me that I really shouldn’t be here.  
  
I don’t know how I find the nurse’s station but now I’m standing five steps away, waiting for someone to stop talking so I can try and verbalize your name again. I don’t know when my hands start shaking but my feet move forward and my mouth somehow manages a smile. I know when the nurse asks me if I need help that I should just admit that I’m lost, and when they ask me if I’m family of whoever I’m looking for, I should tell the truth. But I don’t do either of these things, so they give me directions to your room, and my heart speeds up the way it did when we first met, and that makes my chest ache in the same way it did when you first told me you wanted to leave. In the elevator on my way up, I think about the first time we kissed and how the feeling of anticipated wonder that washed over me is nothing like the dark and sickening ache that takes me over. Once on your floor, I try to leave the feeling behind.  
  
I shouldn’t be here at all. But here I am, outside your door and wishing I’d made it here sooner. I stand there listening for too long – faintly, I hear voices and I’m trying so hard to hear yours. Part of me hopes whoever is inside will vanish or leave through the window so I never have to admit to anyone that I was here, and I am willing them so very much to leave that I don’t realize I’m knocking and pushing the door open.  
  
Of course it’s Dan. I can’t remember if we’ve met before, but the way his face morphs so quickly from pensive to pissed off makes me think he may know who I am. He’s spitting words at me but your flesh and blood image in my peripheral vision has my ears ringing too loud to make anything else out. I’m Brendon, I feel my mouth form the words, I’m Ryan’s friend, I just came to say goodbye, I’ll be fifteen minutes, I’m sorry, I just want to say goodbye.  
  
He stands abruptly, grabbing his (or your?) jacket and pushing past me, and through the ringing I hear his venom as his slinks by: “Some friend you were.”  
  
I turn all the way around to face the door, either to close it or walk back through it – I don’t know for sure until I can think straight again. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to be here. But there were so many times that you needed me to be there and I need to try and make up for the “then” in the “now” because there’s no “later” anymore.  
  
Your body is so still. Hooked up to machines I’ve never thought to think about, you are stiller then I have ever seen you, and I can’t imagine anything going on behind your lids or between your temple. I can’t breathe, so I watch your chest rising and falling, and I can’t believe they’re going to stop that.  
  
I don’t know who “they” are – I don’t know who your new Emergency Contact is, or who makes up your new team, but I know it’s not me anymore. I know when we were talking on our way back to Nevada when you found out you were the last George Ryan Ross left that you wanted to sign a DNR, because if you were going to get that close to death, you wanted to jump right in.  
  
I guess they changed your mind.  
  
The room is suffocatingly small or I’ve lost all depth perception, filled by your bed in one corner and two chairs at its end. The window to your left lets in the sun and my stomach lurches with lyrical memories again. I don’t want to take Dan’s chair, but the other one is too far and I don’t think I have the energy to move it towards you. Instead, I lean against the window sill – just far enough away that I would have to take a step to be at your bed but close enough to survey the damage.  
  
There’s no color to you – even your hair has faded to empty browns and the bleach you used before you turned it blue. It all just fell away from you, or pooled itself into your bruises – a mishmash of your browns and pinks and tans and blacks. Nothing changes as you lay there. You don’t stir or turn over or snore or burst awake like I’d imagined you would when I entered the room.  
  
What do I even say?  
  
_Just, something,_ I imagine you murmuring. Even in my head you don’t really want me there, but I need to be – at the very least, I deserve to feel this pain. I want to take your picture – I want one last image of you that is mine, but I can’t bear the thought of committing your forced-functioning form to physical memory. I want one last go, one last little kiss goodbye, but I can’t – your lips aren’t going to cure me and mine won’t wake you up.  
  
You’ll only be Ryan for three more hours, and then you’ll be past tense.  
  
Spencer’s the one who told me. Assumingly, Dan made the decision that you weren’t worth waiting for anymore but wasn’t ready to pull the plug right away. Once Spencer heard, he called me. He’d been to see you once or twice, but he said it wasn’t much closure. “Unless you want to be haunted by that image” he’d said in an attempt to keep me at bay. This was two days ago. I’ve barely slept, and I knew I wouldn’t until I saw you, either wrapped in this last set of borrowed sheets or sinking into the ground. I can’t even tell which would hurt me worse.  
  
I don’t know when I start crying, but I am, and I’m trying to keep it from getting loud and ugly and violent, but I haven’t cried in months and this pain is so familiar but so much worse – when you left, I wanted you gone, but not forever, that wasn’t fair – and I just want to lie next to you and will you awake but there’s no amount of bargaining I can do to keep you here, but I want so badly to try again, and to be better, and to be –  
  
One loud cough and my eyes are clear. You’re still motionless, stagnant and pale and functioning and I realize the same voice I heard before is telling me my time is up. Dan, in the doorway, gesturing to the clock on an opposing wall keeps his spine straight as he recommends I wash my face before driving home. When I ask for one more minute, he leaves with the door ajar behind him, no doubt standing close by.  
  
Your hands are so cold. I don’t know when I get so close to you, but the side of my hand touches the inside of yours, and you are colder than your voice has ever been and I want to tell you whatever you need to hear to warm you up again. I haven’t been this close to you in years – I haven’t felt your skin since things were good, or at least better, and I can’t stop thinking about it falling apart underground.  
  
What do I say?  
  
“Sorry.” It just comes out, falls from my lips and down into your open palms wanting you to hold it. You can’t hear me, I’m so certain of that – unless those tubes can pump my words into your body to hunt down your consciousness, I’m just talking to myself. “I’m sorry,” it comes again, like I have no control.  
  
I shouldn’t have come here.  
  
I don’t know when my grip tightens, but it does, just a bit to where my hand clasps around yours and I lean down to you and it comes as a whisper again – _“I’m so sorry”_ – and all I can think of is telling you I love you for the first time on the tour bus, but back then your cheeks were bright and your eyes were painted and your heart beat on its own.  
  
I straighten up and I let you go. I hadn’t thought far into this, so now I’m stuck scrambling for something to do for the last few hours left of your life while your new friend (orjustlover) watches you die. I don’t envy him. But I don’t think I’ll be able to focus on anything else regardless; my ears are already buzzing again, my nose capturing death and shooting it through me like a reminder.  
  
I can feel Dan on the other side of the door, and I don’t want him to catching me emotional again, so I roll my shoulders and wipe my face dry quickly. _I’m sorry. I miss you. I love you. Goodbye._ As far as I’m concerned, the words stay in my head, but as I walk towards the door, that same cough comes from the other side of the room.  
  
“I missed you too.”


End file.
